The present invention relates generally to the field of computers, and more particularly to online messaging systems.
Many data processing systems have to accept input from sources which are not trusted or from sources which require some validation before being allowed through to a secondary processing tier. Typically staging areas are used to perform this validation and avoid exposing sensitive systems to the ‘outside world’. For example, systems running in a demilitarized Zone (DMZ). A DMZ is a conceptual network design where publicly accessible servers are placed on a separate, isolated network segment. The intention of a DMZ is to ensure that publicly accessible servers cannot contact other internal network segments, in the event that a server is compromised. Such solutions rely on extremely careful design, implementation, and maintenance to ensure that ‘bad’ data is never passed directly to systems which could be corrupted.